SEO Content Writing Tips For Writers Only. Bots Not Welcome

I’m going to start this article on SEO content writing tips by telling you to ignore the search engines. Throw the anchor texts overboard. Let your keyword density be fluid and natural.

For sure, the tips, checklists and SEO tools mentioned below will help you rank better than content that hasn’t been optimized. But your primary job is to write for people.

To be specific, you have to create content that is useful and interesting to your target audience. I’m writing this article for you – my target audience of people who need help with digital marketing. In this post, I’m trying to help you learn how to write and optimize web pages and blog posts to get more search traffic.

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SEO Content Writing Tip #1: Know Your Audience

How do you know what content your target audience is looking for? You may already know some of the things your ideal customer would type into Google. But is there some way that allows you to come up with a big list of keywords that your customers are actually searching for on the web? To do this, what you need to learn is:

The moment you are able to do this, you will be able to structure your content to meet all their needs and pain points. You still need to use keyword research tools like SEOProfiler and Google Adwords Keyword Planner. But all this hard work with customer personas before firing up the tools ensures that you end up with keywords, titles and content that will be of interest to your target audience.

Note: It may not all be what you want to write about, but it will definitely all be what your customers want to read.

SEO Content Writing Tip #2: What’s in a Title?

The latest stats from WordPress show that 69.5 million new posts are published every month, and are read by over 409 million people who view more than 23.6 billion pages and add 46.8 million new comments. That’s just WordPress, which covers slightly less than 60% of the world’s blogs.

With more than 100 million new posts trying to grab a share of the web, what are your chances of getting some of those eyeballs?

Bleak, no doubt. But it gets worse. According to Copyblogger, eight out of 10 people will read the headlines, but only two out of 10 will read the rest.

So now we come to the core of the issue – What do those two people see that makes them click on your link? It’s your title and meta description, which a search engine shows in the results.

So how to write titles that are devastatingly effective at getting you in the first-page results on Google, and will then attract more clicks from search users who see your title and description in the results?

First of all, follow this SEO title checklist:

Keyword present in the title;

Title tag length is not more than 70-71 characters;

Title is relevant to the page content;

Apart from the first letter, avoid using capital letters unless it’s a name or place;

Use at most one superlative in your title;

The two bar charts below fromConductor nicely explain what I am trying to say.

SEO Content Writing Tip #3: Get to the Point. Fast

Goldfish can hold on to a thought for 9 seconds. But our attention span on the web is a mere 8 seconds. Website visitors will quickly scan your title, meta description and whatever’s above the fold to decide whether they want to read the rest. If they are interested, that gives you another 20 seconds.

According to the Nielsen Norman Group, the rate of users leaving slows down after the first 30 seconds. If they cross this threshold, it means you have their attention. For at least another 30 seconds or so.

What all these stats are saying is that it’s paramount that you show visitors a glimpse of the goods in the title, meta description and first paragraph of your article.

They won’t read 800 words to find out if your article is actually going to help them in the last 200 words. They will only read the rest if your title and the first 150 words convince them that what’s below is useful and/or interesting.

SEO Content Writing Tip #4: Use Images, Videos and Sub-headings

You will lose the reader’s interest if a paragraph or sentence goes on on on. This is where you rekindle your reader’s interest by making use of images, videos and sub-headings.

Use small sentences. Avoid stringing together long sentences using conjunctions.

Talk to your readers in the first person;

Break up the text into smaller paragraphs of 2-3 lines at most;

Even better if you can break it up into bullet points.

Doing all this breaks the monotony of having to read large blocks of text. All the rules applied to your title should also apply to your sub-headings, except for the use of capital letters.

SEO Content Writing Tip #5: Word Count

Your ideal word count depends on what it is that you are selling to your site visitors. But you should also know that studies have shown that long-form posts tend to rank better on the search engines.

For example, a study by Mediumshows that the optimal posttakes 7 minutes to consume. This translates into roughly 1,700 to 1,800 words per post.

SEO Content Writing Tip #6: Call to Action

One of the things they teach you in sales is to never forget to ask a lead to buy. You can write a captivating search-optimized article that attracts and engages your target audience. But without a call to action (CTA), the whole effort is wasted.

So consider this before you write the article – What is your CTA for this article? What is it that you want the reader to do?

In this case, my CTA is that I want you to enter your email and subscribe to the Kamkash blog.

If you liked all these highly effective SEO content writing tips, you can get more of the same in your inbox if you subscribe to our blog. Please enter your email below and click subscribe.

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